


The Return

by HephaistionsThighs



Category: Sunshine (2007)
Genre: Blood, Gen, Supernatural Elements, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-25 16:29:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4968112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HephaistionsThighs/pseuds/HephaistionsThighs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Sorry I scared you," Capa said.  "But I guess I shouldn't be too sorry, since you are the one who killed me."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Return

"You've got to be fucking kidding me."

After waiting for what seemed like all day, Mace had barely been able to start recording his message when the alert appeared on the screen: _Solar Wind: Icarus to Earth Communication Not Available._   This wasn't a passing flare; they were entering the Dead Zone.  It was far more likely than not that communication wouldn't be available again until the homeward journey.

Mace couldn't tell you exactly what happened after that.  He saw red, and he saw Capa, the asshole who took up all his time, his last chance to speak to his loved ones on Earth before the most dangerous part of their mission, where an entire crew had already disappeared before them.

Over his own shouted profanity, and Capa struggling to get away from him, and the sound of the scuffle itself, he registered a loud crack.  Very quickly, Trey and Harvey were there, shouting his name and grabbing him, but what made him stop was the realization that Capa had stopped fighting back.  He let him go, and the physicist immediately slipped to the floor, limp.

"Mace!  What the fuck did you do?"  Trey successfully pulled Mace away, and Harvey knelt in front of Capa, trying to inspect him.  "You knocked him unconscious!"

Part of Mace thought, _Good!_   But the thought, _Oh shit_ , also crossed his mind.

"Capa.  Hey.  Wake up.  Wake up."  Harvey tapped Capa's face and shook him slightly, both to no effect.  He reached behind the younger man's head, and his hand came back bloody.

.

Capa didn't come to as they brought him to the Medical Bay, which left Mace sitting outside, waiting for news.  He wanted Searle to come out and tell him Capa was going to be fine, and demand to know just what Mace thought he was doing.  Not that Mace knew what to say to that, but Searle chastising him would at least be a return to normalcy.  Unfortunately, it wasn't Searle who first asked Mace to explain himself.

"Tell me what happened."  He could tell Kaneda was angry, even though the man's voice was as even and steady as ever.

Mace took a breath.  "I was waiting to send my message, Capa took a long time, and when he was done, the wind was too high.  I just... lost it."  He could tell Kaneda the facts of what happened, but he couldn't justify what he'd done.  The cause was simple: The mission had been going on for too long, he'd been bored and frustrated and trapped in a metal tube for too long.  He'd lost track.  But it wasn't so simple to admit that he fucked up and snapped under the pressure.

The captain considered him for a long moment.  He knew he didn't need to explain to Mace how unacceptable his actions were.  Mace knew.  "When Searle's done with Capa, you need to meet with him."

With that, Kaneda went into the medical bay.  A few minutes later, Searle came out instead.

Mace didn't really like Searle.  Searle was friendly to everyone and talked a lot about impractical things.  He was the only one who seemed unaffected by the length of their journey, as mentally healthy and enthusiastic as day one.  He was holding himself together, and Mace apparently wasn't.  He'd never seen him truly furious before.

The doctor didn't break it to him gently.  "Capa's going to die."

Mace froze.  It had been a fifteen-second fight, if even that.  There was no way he killed Capa.  "How?"

"He's bleeding into his brain."  Searle become visibly more upset as he spoke.  "It's too much to control.  His skull is also fractured, his blood-brain barrier is broken, and he's leaking cerebrospinal fluid into his bloodstream."  He wasn't telling Mace all this because he needed the information to understand Capa's condition.  He was telling him because honestly, in that moment, he wanted Mace to feel like shit.  Later on, after this, he'd go back to doing his job and make sure Mace didn't feel like so much shit he couldn't do his job too.

"There's nothing you can do to help him?"

"I'm not a brain surgeon.  I can't do anything to save him.  All I can do is try to keep him out of pain.  He probably has a couple of hours left."

Mace felt like it was getting harder to breathe.  He recalled in the fight - or attack, really - how Capa's head hit that corner, and there'd been that sound.  He hadn't realized at the time that it was the sound of him killing someone.

"You've got nothing to say?" Searle demanded.

"...I'm sorry," he managed.  "Searle, I-"  He wanted to say something better, but couldn't find the words.  He knew Searle cared for Capa more than anyone on board.

The doctor shook his head at him, and left.

.

By the time Mace closed himself into his quarters for the night, he felt like he'd been beaten inside.  Everyone wanted to know why he'd done it.  Cassie could barely look at him; she'd been crying all day since she found out.  The crew seemed to understand he didn't mean to kill Capa, but it couldn't be called an accident either.

There was also the added anxiety that it had been Capa killed.  He was the only person on board who knew how to operate the stellar bomb.  The mission wasn't necessarily doomed, _Icarus_ was programmed to deliver the Payload, but a computer program would never be as good as the living, breathing genius who designed the thing.

Searle's time estimate had been accurate.  Capa died only a few hours after sending his last message home, promising his family he'd see them again.  Mace curled up on his bed and willed sleep to take him.

It wouldn't.  He wondered if he would eventually go to prison for this.  It wasn't murder, but maybe manslaughter?  Was that the right word for unintentional murder?  That was a grim idea - spending years helping to save the entire world, then coming back to a criminal trial.

He couldn't stop thinking about Capa.  He wasn't sure if he ever knew him well or not.  Throughout the mission and all their training, he'd spent years with the man, but Capa was quiet, and so often busy with his own work.  On the rare occasions they'd spoken one-on-one, he never revealed much about his personal life.  Mace didn't think he had much of a life outside of Project Icarus.

Capa was the youngest one on board.  He taught Mace how to play chess properly, and he... he never did anything to deserve what Mace did to him.  How could Capa have possibly known that they would enter the Dead Zone at that exact time?  It could just as easy have come half an hour later, and none of this would have happened.  Mace had had plenty of time to send messages home, almost nothing but free time for eighteen months, but it came down to the last minute, and luck turned against them both.

He lay awake in the dark for a long time before at last deciding to get back up.  Maybe some water or some food would help - anything to fill him with something other than guilt.

Being in the dining hall did make him feel a bit better.  It was well lit, and no one was there to scowl at him.  He sat, staring at his water more than drinking it.  Abruptly, the glass caught the reflection of movement.

He looked up at the doorway across from him, but whoever it was, they were gone.  He hesitated.  Everyone on board was angry with him right now.  But the chance that it might be someone who didn't _completely_ hate his guts, someone who would be willing to talk with him, that was enough to motivate him to pursue them.

He went into the hallway and peered down the corridor.  The lights were dimmed for the "night time," so all he could make out was a dark silhouette gradually disappearing further ahead of him.  That way led only to the Payload or the Observation Room, which seemed like a long way to walk in the middle of the night.  As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he could see the other better, but he still couldn't tell who it was.

"Hello?"

The person stopped.  They didn't turn around; they just stood there, very still.

Mace felt his unease increasing.  The figure's motionlessness was bizarre; that wasn't how normal people behaved.  And who this person was looking more and more like wasn't possible.

He took a step closer, and the person turned toward him.  The impossible became manifest: It was Capa.  There was enough light to identify him, but his expression was obscured, masked in darkness.

Mace backed away so quickly he tripped and fell over his own feet.  Any pain from the impact was denied sensory importance as adrenaline flooded his system.  It was meant to be fight or flight, but as he saw Capa begin to come closer, his panic turned it to simply freeze or flee.  He got up and ran, not looking back and not stopping until he was back in his room.

.

Mace sat on his bed, staring at the door.  Eventually his breathing slowed, and nothing nightmarish came through.  He laid down.  After several minutes, the fear that had seized him was subsiding.

It must have been a dream.  All of it.  Here he was, in bed, freaked out over a nightmare.  Having the person you just accidentally killed haunt your dreams was normal.  He'd never gotten up, he never left his room, and he never saw undead Capa in the dark.

He turned over, determined to go back to sleep and forget about this forever.  Then he realized he was wearing shoes.

He sat up, staring at the door again.  He had gotten up.  He had seen something horrible out there.  Now he had to go back out - either he needed to assure himself that his vision of Capa wasn't real, it was all a figment of his tired, guilt-ridden mind, or else Searle was the worst doctor in the solar system, Capa wasn't even dead, but instead was wandering around with a brain injury.  Mace seeing things seemed like the more likely scenario.

As he opened his door, he looked left and right down the hallway.  No one.  He half considered going directly to the medical bay, to see for himself that Capa was dead, not walking around alive or otherwise.  But that idea was quickly dismissed; he didn't want to see Capa's corpse.

He left the crew quarters, and gradually became very aware of the sound of his footsteps.  At one point he suddenly stopped, listening, making sure that the footfalls really were all his own.  He quickly turned and looked behind him.  Not being able to see all the way in every direction was unnerving.  Something could be just out of sight, an inch beyond the gloom.  Mace considered turning on all the lights, aside from those which would wake his crewmates, but someone was bound to notice the spike in energy usage tomorrow.

He checked each room he passed, and each was dark and empty.  He checked the dining hall, still well-lit and still empty.  As he approached the spot where he'd seen - or thought he saw - Capa, he felt like the walls were closing in around him.  He never had problems with claustrophobia before, but now even the long darkness in front of him looked compressed, like he was going to run into a wall or a cold body at any moment.

It seemed to take forever to reach the Observation Room.  If Capa were alive but disoriented from his injury, he might very well go to the Payload, but Mace didn't have the access code to get into its interior.  And he didn't think Capa was really alive.

At last in the doorway, he felt comforted by the warm orange glow of the Sun.  No one was here.  What he had seen wasn't real.  Everyone would still loathe him tomorrow, but for tonight, he could at least get a few hours of sleep in peace.  To satisfy a last bit of paranoia, he checked the room's back corners.

He stepped into the room and looked left: nothing there.  He turned around to his right, and immediately jerked away from the face inches from his own.  He managed to keep his footing this time, but his breath seized in his chest.

"Sorry I scared you," Capa said.  "But I guess I shouldn't be too sorry, since you are the one who killed me."

.

Capa looked so real.  Fully lit, he didn't appear so menacing, at least not enough to push Mace to flee again.  His heart was still hammering, though, ready to do just that.

He reached out and touched Capa's shoulder.  It was solid, as tangible as anything else in this world.  The physicist gave him the same sort of look he would expect to receive if nothing were strange about this except Mace randomly groping him.

"You're alive."

"Sharp as always, Mace."  Capa shifted to extract himself from Mace's hold.

"Jesus, fuck, Capa, we need to get you to Searle.  I know he's the idiot who pronounced you prematurely dead, but he should probably look at you.  Shit, you shouldn't even be--"

"He's not an idiot."

"Right.  He's a brilliant doctor who can't tell the different between dead and not dead."  Was he really going to be in an argument with Capa within 90 seconds of learning he hadn't killed him after all?

"I was dead," Capa said.

Mace didn't know how to respond to that.  "You're confused.  You hit your head."

"You bashed my brains in."  For a moment, the way he looked at Mace made him afraid again.

"I didn't mean to," Mace defended.

Capa looked away, and sighed.  "I know that."

"Capa... I'm sorry."

Capa walked away and sat on the long bench centered in the Observation Room.  He gazed into the Sun.  "I know that too," he said finally.

"Then let me help you.  Let me take you back to the medical bay."

"I don't need to go."

Mace decided the other man clearly wasn't in a fit state to make that call.  "Icarus, get Searle."

No response.

"Icarus, wake up Dr. Searle.  Tell him he's needed in the Observation Room."

Still nothing.

"It's not going to do that for you," Capa said.

This had to be the weirdest night of Mace's life.  "Did you deactivate Icarus somehow?"  Capa shouldn't have been able to do that, in terms of either security clearance or technical capability.

"No.  But I can control it with my mind now."

Again, Mace didn't know what to say.  What Capa said was obviously nonsense, but he couldn't explain why Icarus wouldn't respond to him either.

"Icarus, what time is it?" he asked as a test, to see if the computer would answer anything at all.

_"2:03 AM, Mace."_

"Now ask it something else, and I'll stop it from answering," Capa invited.

Mace paused.  "Icarus, dim the filter to 1%."

No verbal response, and the room stayed just as bright as it was.

"But I can do that without asking."  And after a moment, the sunlight vanished to only a faint glow.

Okay, Mace was clearly the one losing his mind now.  None of this was possible.  "How did you do that?"

"I don't really know," Capa confessed.  "But I can tell you that the Sun is emitting something else, something we haven't learned to detect yet.  We aren't shielded against it, and it's affecting us."  He sounded so certain of what he was saying.

Mace sat down, listening and watching him.

"I don't know for certain, but our proximity has to be a factor.  This doesn't happen on Earth.  I think it's the reason I... came back."  He looked down at his folded hands.  He was still wearing the clothes he died in.  "I'm me, but I'm something else now."

"What?" Mace asked.

Capa shook his head.  "Different."

.

Mace was doubting his own mind in many ways.  He found himself believing Capa enough to be convinced to return to his quarters without trying to bodily drag the smaller man back for medical care first.  But as real as the whole experience had been, he again was unsure if any of it had happened.

It the morning, the mess hall was full of happy chatter by the time he got there.  The others looked at him as he entered, and their eyes weren't full of accusation the way they had been the day before.

"Mace!  Capa is alive!" Trey announced.

The engineer did his best to seem genuinely surprised.  He learned that Capa was currently being examined by Searle, the doctor himself achieving what Mace hadn't been able to.  As they ate, Searle joined them, though his patient was confined to the medical bay for monitoring for the time being.

"I can't explain it.  I couldn't detect any pulse, any respiration... but now he seems to be completely fine.  His blood pressure's good, he's alert, he passed every cognition test.  I don't know what happened."

"We're just grateful burial wasn't an option," Kaneda joked.

Searle chuckled along with the rest at his own expense.  "I have to say, I've never been so happy to be wrong."

.

Mace was glad the day's schedule had him performing maintenance in the engine room.  Icarus' engine was a beautiful, complex machine, but all of its functions and needs were logical and predictable.  It made sense.  Even its repetitive sound could be comforting to his over-stressed thoughts.

He was working half inside one component with his tools laid out beside him.  As he finished with a wrench he sat it aside and sought out his screwdriver.  He found his set of small hex keys, no, and discarded them, then a flashlight, no, also discarded, then the screwdriver's handle was pressed into his palm and Capa's voice said, "Here."

Mace's jerk of surprise was not so severe as to make him strike his head inside the machine, but his profanity did echo through it until he scooted out and freed himself.  "Is this the form your revenge is going to take?  Just startling the shit out of me over and over again until I die too?"

Capa was crouching beside him, his calmness a contrast to Mace's agitated state.  He shrugged.  "You'd come back."

"Yeah, that's a great comfort, thank you."

"I was trying to help.  It had rolled away from you."  Capa nodded toward the screwdriver still in Mace's hand.

"And is not making any sound when you sneak up on me one of your new zombie things?" Mace asked.

The other didn't deign to answer that, moving on to the point of his visit.  "You know not to talk to any of the others about what you know about me, right?"

Mace hadn't told anyone, but he hadn't realized that he wasn't supposed to, either.  "Why not?"

"Because they need to focus on the mission.  What happened to me isn't important to that," Capa explained.

Mace nodded, even though he was still uncertain.  "Right."

"They can't doubt me, they can't doubt that I'm going to do what needs to be done," Capa continued.  He needed Mace to understand.  "This can't be a distraction."

"Okay," Mace agreed, more firmly this time.  He had gone from unsure if he even knew Capa personally to being held as the man's sole confidant.  That would be stranger to him if there weren't significantly stranger things going on as well.

.

Two days later, Mace got up early to take his shift preparing breakfast.  When he arrived, Capa was already there, surrounded by papers at the table.

"Couldn't sleep?"

"Not anymore."

Mace paused.  "What, at all?"

"I don't seem to need to."  Capa continued writing away in his notebook as he spoke.

Mace watched him for a moment.  "What are you working on?"

"A better bomb."  The pages were filled with calculations, written descriptions, and even sketches.

"What's wrong with the one we've got?"  This was asked with more urgency than his other inquiries.  If Capa's bomb didn't work, they were all fucked.  The Earth was fucked.

"Nothing.  It will work.  But--"

"Probably.  You've always said it will _probably_ work," Mace corrected.

"No, it will.  I know now."  Capa appeared completely serious and sure.  Mace almost asked how he could possibly know this, but even if Capa could explain, he doubted he could understand.  "This one would just be more efficient.  I'm passing time; it's not ever going to be built."

Mace nodded.  "Well.  Do you want eggs?  You do still eat, right?"

.

Twenty-four hours a day was a long time to pass when you had nothing to do.  Capa used to sleep nine hours a night, minus the occasional waking from nightmares.  They were all scheduled for exactly eight, but no one ever cared if he retired earlier.  Now, he usually sat in his room and pretend to be asleep.  He was quickly running out of paper to draft his boredom onto.  To avoid that, he learned to lie quietly and "listen" to the others dreaming.  Or not so much "listen" as "feel," or... he needed another word that English didn't have.

His activities during the day were basically the same to an outside observer, but for him, everything was different.  He needed someone to talk to.  He wished now that it was Searle who had first found him alive again, or that he could tell his friend everything.  But that wasn't a good idea - Searle would want to examine him and investigate this change as closely as he could.  He wouldn't be able to simply accept it or to keep it to himself.

Capa slipped into Mace's room and watched him sleep.  If he wanted to talk to anyone, it would have to be him.  He tried to tune into the other's condition carefully; if Mace woke now and saw him, he'd be understandably disturbed.  Not that the idea of scaring the man once again was entirely without appeal.

He left as he sensed the first of the crew starting to wake.

.

"For the record, I don't 'sneak,' I walk quietly."

And yet every time, the physicist seemed to appear out of thin air.  Mace turned away from the monitor he'd been watching absently.  "That's the definition of sneaking."

Capa sat across from him.  "No, sneaking would be if I intended to scare you.  It's not my fault you're terrified of me."

Mace couldn't help grinning.  "Listen, brainiac, you don't scare me.  I already know I can take you."

The joke came out before he thought of how incredibly awkward joking about his ability to take Capa out might be.  Fortunately, Capa took it with good humor, offering a wry smile.  After a moment, though, he became serious.

"If I did die again, I wonder if I'd come back even more altered."

"What's it like?"

Capa considered.  "I wish I could describe it.  It's like... trying to explain the emotional effect of music, in a culture without hearing or any sense of vibration at all."  He looked at the control panel behind Mace.  "I can pick out every individual action Icarus takes, even though the whole ship is loud with signals all the time.  I don't even know what most of them really are.  I'd have to ask Trey.  Or get another doctorate in computer science."

Mace watched him.  He no longer doubted that what Capa was experiencing was genuine, not merely the delusion of a damaged brain.

Capa watched him back.  "I really do wish I knew how to convey it.  I... need someone to understand."

"You can always talk to me, if you want.  I owe you that much," Mace said.

"Thanks.  But I don't think talking's enough."

.

Mace looked around to make sure Corazon wasn't present as he entered the Oxygen Garden.  Capa was, though, and that's who he was looking for.  He'd clearly been becoming more and more unhappy since his death.  Mace couldn't help but feel partially responsible, so he made an effort to seek the younger man out and see how he was.

"Did you know I was coming?"  He suspected he did.

"You asked Icarus where I was, so I figured you'd be here soon."

"And how are you doing with that whole... thing?"

Capa took a long time to choose his answer.  He wasn't sure if he should be completely honest with Mace, but Mace was the only one he could be honest with at all.  "I've never been so alone."

Truly, he looked miserable to Mace.  Mace didn't know what to do; comforting was not something he had ever mastered in his life.  If things had been normal, he would have tried to avoid Capa until he got over it.  But things weren't ever going back to normal.

"I never thought I needed people.  I thought I was used to being alone."  He'd always preferred to stay on the periphery of the group.  "But I realize now that I was with other people in ways I didn't even recognize; I was connected in some innate, human way.  Now I know more about the crew than ever, but I'm completely isolated."

"How do you know more about us?" Mace asked.

"Your emotions hang off of you like a scent.  They linger.  If you get frustrated, I can tell for hours after you get over it."  Capa took a deep breath.  "I'm on a different wavelength.  I communicate in ways none of you do, and I need someone to _hear_ me."

"Capa.  I'm listening."  He grabbed the other man's shoulder, trying to calm him.  "I want to understand.  I want to help."

"I know you do."  But he didn't appear relieved by the sentiment.

"I mean it.  If there's anything at all I can do to help, I want to," Mace insisted.

Capa looked at him, considering what he said, and as much as Mace said he wanted to understand what he was going through, he couldn't even tell what he was thinking.

.

_"Mace: Maintenance request in the Payload."_

That was an unpleasant surprise.  He had no scheduled work in the Payload, so if there was a request, it meant something must have gone wrong.

"Copy that, Icarus.  I'm on my way."

When he arrived, he hit the intercom button on the security pad.  "Capa, I got a maintenance request."  There was a beep, a red light switched to green, and the door to the interior unlocked.

This place would always be creepy to him.  It wasn't as incredibly vast as the exterior, but it was just as sparsely lit and cold.  He hadn't been close to Capa before killing him, so he'd barely ever been here.  He was dedicating his life to this thing's delivery, but he didn't really comprehend it.  He supposed the bomb and Capa were even more the perfect pair now - both unfathomable to the ordinary mind.

Capa watched him as he approached, but he didn't say anything or come to meet him.

As he reached him, he asked, "Is it the computer?  Because--"  A sudden flash of metal, and sharp pain at the top of his thigh, near where it met his hip.

He cried out and shoved Capa away.  He saw the small blade covered in blood in the other's hand, and saw much more blood already soaking his pant leg when he looked down at himself.  He collapsed.

"What... Why?  Why would you...?"

Capa came closer, and he looked pained, like he was sorry for what he'd just done, but at the same time, there was an edge of determination in his expression.

Mace tried to press down on the wound, but he was rapidly becoming faint.  Darkness was encroaching on his vision.

Capa guided him to lay back, lowering his head gently to the floor.  "Don't be scared, Mace.  In a few hours, you'll be back.  I won't be alone anymore."


End file.
